Wrap It Up

[AlexF]

Can it be Inspector Inaba next to Slaine on Prog 2016? Doesn't seem likely though...

As for Prog 500, honestly, it's a pretty solid top 20 of both artists and characters even now.
Obvs would swap out Bad City Blue (and maybe Robin Smith); and an Arthur Ranson Anderson over Kitson. But everything else is spot on!

[Jim_Campbell]

Can it be Inspector Inaba next to Slaine on Prog 2016? Doesn't seem likely though...

That does look like a Hondo uniform, so maybe it is Inaba.

[Funt Solo]

I thought maybe Durham Red as another option, but the hair seems wrong.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Lulu?  Hershey?  Though not really in the right clobber for either.

[Funt Solo]

17 - Let Them Eat Cake

Only twenty progs after the big 500, we got the tenth birthday prog's celebratory cake - which was the other method of honoring prog 2000...


Prog 520's Ten Zarjaz Years! (from 1987, by John Higgins) has a pretty solid line-up of thrills on offer. This is a landmark prog as the paper quality and size made a permanent shift for the first time since the progs 110-128 high quality blip.



---

Prog 2000's Happy 2000th Issue, Squaxx (one of the variant covers from 2016, by Glenn Fabry and Ryan Brown) has everyone throw on a smile (which looks creepy on Dredd) - except for Cyber-Matt, who looks stressed out, and Tharg, who looks egomaniacal.













---

Next: TFIF...

[AlexF]

More love for Inaba!

[Barrington Boots]

I love this one for the facial expressions. Dredd looks horrific, but check out Judge Fire beneath him!
You've also got creepy Kano, pissed up Mean, Death taking a selfie and Durham Red absolutely cracking up. Plus Henry Moon making a rare appearance!

[Blue Cactus]

The grinning Hammerstein is a thing of nightmares! But it's a joyful cover. Love that Sam Slade!

[Doomlord66]

Hmmmm, some 2k characters should never, NEVER, be pictured 'smiling'. Ugh shudder....

[JayzusB.Christ]

I'd forgotten about that cover - what an absolute classic.  That's Inaba again up the front, isn't it?  And that Arnold Rimmer lad behind Halo Jones must be Bill Savage.

It wasn't the first time Fabry had drawn Dredd grinning inanely, either.

(The article this image came from claims that it was from a story where a woman from MC1 gets godlike powers - I was sure it was a man.)

[Funt Solo]

That's probably from prog 600's The Power of the Gods - an oddity with six color pages and two in black and white.

[Funt Solo]

18 - Rogue Trooper

All of that Rogue Trooper, and only two wraparounds! And the OG Rogue is relegated to the back cover of a lesser known special. Rectify this malfeasance, Thargnanimous, Bringer of Thrills!


Prog 687's Battlefield Blues (from 1990, by Will Simpson) gives us the OG Fr1day, before it all went a bit Pete Tong.



---

The Rogue Trooper Action Special's Future War (from 1996, by Dave Gibbons) is something of a hydra, with Fr1day rocking the front, and Venus Bluegenes providing covering fire. Poor old OG Rogue is a ghost in the sky. (Recently, in-comic, those three characters had all met, and OG RT had suffered perma-death.) It's a bit like that inside, with two Fr1day tales, one for Venus and a colored reprint of the first RT strip from prog 228.



---

Next: Simons say...

[Funt Solo]

19 - Wrap-Spasm, Book II

A couple of Slaines from a couple of Simons...


Prog 688's ...and he didn't think it too many (1990; Simon Bisley) has Slaine warping out in his wild boar codpiece, and taking out a combination of sea demons and skeletons. The action fades out on the back cover rather a lot. Great wild-eyed horse action, there.





---

Prog 1882's Chop Chop! (2014; Simon Davis) features an older, more mutton-chopped Slaine up against a twisted giant. The crowd of onlooking giant-bruvvers has diminished in the final rendering compared to the rough.





 

---

Next: I'm Batman...

[Colin YNWA]

I love the 'fade out' of the action on the back cover and it really leds into the power of the action on the cover.

And boy oh boy even on a glossy cover the colour lose from that original is quite something!

[JayzusB.Christ]

Two excellent covers from two very different Sláine artists.

For me, Bisley has never topped his Horned God stuff - the way that the terrified horse's eye forms the focal point of all the action is a stroke of genius, and shows that there was a lot more to Bisley than blood, muscles and tits. Although, of course, there were plenty of those too.

The other Simon, Mr Davis, brought an atmosphere to Sláine that it hadn't seen for years.  For all of Clint Langley's talents, he couldn't have brought that level of lush greenness to a scene like that.  Sadly I didn't think Pat's scripts at that time were his best, but that's for another thread.